I fell in Marvel Multicross with a Strange Shop

As Nathan returned, the air was already thrumming with tension. Sirens began to wail, harsh and sudden, echoing through the distorted skyline like a mechanical scream.

"You didn't say you'd be taking that much," the Doctor muttered, not scolding but clearly unsettled, watching Nathan with narrowed eyes as the sounds of alert built into a chorus of dread.

Nathan's gaze turned toward the rapidly approaching wave—Hybrid soldiers and swarms of DNAliens, their grotesque silhouettes sprinting and slithering toward him with frightening speed. There was no time to talk, no time to think.

He stepped forward and released it.

A tidal wave of invisible pressure pulsed out from him—Hero's Haki.

His voice cut through the sirens like a knife:

"Turn back. You're not strong enough to face me."

The effect was instant.

It wasn't just fear—it was domination. The DNAliens collapsed mid-charge, their bodies convulsing as if something ancient and primal had reminded them they were prey. Even among the Highbreeds, who prided themselves on their superiority, there was hesitation. Several turned around and fled, others froze mid-step as if rooted to the earth by the sheer force of his will. Only a handful, those with truly indomitable willpower, continued forward—staggered, eyes wide, teeth clenched—but they could do nothing. Nathan didn't even acknowledge them as he grabbed the Doctor, Amy, and Rory, lifting them effortlessly as he shot into the sky toward the towering structure ahead.

There was no more room for stealth. The enemy already knew they were here. All that was left was speed.

Unfortunately, speed wasn't kind to passengers.

By the time they reached the tower's midpoint, Amy and Rory looked like they had just survived a high-G roller coaster crash. Amy's hair was sticking up in weird angles, and Rory looked pale enough to pass for a ghost.

"Ugh… flying with you is like being launched out of a slingshot made of pain," Amy mumbled, her words slurred from nausea.

"Noted," Nathan said dryly.

But his focus shifted quickly. The Tower loomed above them like a dark spire, crawling with Highbreed elites. These weren't the usual foot soldiers—they moved with precision, their power radiating in cold waves. He could sense the difference instantly. These were no grunts.

"This place is packed with serious muscle," Nathan muttered. "Do we even know where the Time Vortex Fragment is? If I become Way Big, I might be able to tear the whole thing down."

"Not happening," the Doctor said, already fiddling with his sonic. "Even a Tokustar wouldn't be able to crack this structure. This isn't just any building—it's stitched together with tech older than most galaxies."

Nathan raised an eyebrow. "You say that like you know it personally."

"I do," the Doctor replied, revealing a hidden doorway with a flourish. "This tower wasn't built by the Hybrids. It's stolen—ripped from the Time Lords themselves. Most of the tech here is ours. They couldn't figure out how to tap the Time Vortex Fragment on their own, so they just… borrowed what we buried."

Amy blinked. "How do you always know where the secret doors are?"

"I'm good with stolen property," he said with a wink.

They pressed onward. But Nathan's mind was spinning.

Disable it before they can use it to undo what Ben's about to do…

His feet froze.

Wait… who is Ben?

A cold sensation clawed at the back of his mind—like something had been forcibly peeled away from his memory. He couldn't place it at first, but then it hit him.

A void.

There was a void where something important used to be.

Nathan squeezed his eyes shut, breathing hard. A pressure built behind his temples. A memory—no, an existence—was missing. It wasn't gone like something forgotten. It had been ripped out of his very awareness.

But his meta-knowledge… that still flickered in the corners of his mind like the fading embers of a fire.

Ben Tennyson.

Gone.

Erased.

Wiped not just from records or minds—but from reality itself.

His hands trembled slightly. Not from fear—but from the sheer, impossible scope of what that implied. Ben wasn't some random hero. He was tied to Alien X. A being of cosmic weight. To erase Ben meant to tamper with the very structure of possibility.

"Doctor," Nathan said, trying to keep his voice steady, "you know Ben Tennyson, right?"

The Doctor glanced at him. "Who?"

Nathan's heart sank.

"I've lived long enough to meet more people than most planets have, but that name doesn't ring a bell."

Nathan shook his head, clinging to the last fraying thread. "He's the wielder of the Omnitrix! A hero. He's—he was—key to all of this."

The Doctor frowned, more seriously now. "Nathan, you have the Omnitrix. And yes, there's that Galvin—Albedo, right? But I don't recall anyone named Ben Tennyson."

His voice was honest. And that made it worse.

Nathan looked away. A deep fear pooled in his stomach. *Someone—*or something—was deleting Ben. Not just from time, not just from memory, but from existence itself.

He drew a breath. "You don't remember when you got wiped from existence either, right?"

"I'm sorry—was I?" the Doctor asked, clearly puzzled.

"Oh. Right," Nathan said. "Amy and Rory aren't married yet. So that hasn't happened… time stuff."

They both gave him weird looks, but there was no time for spoilers.

Nathan exhaled and activated the Omnitrix, shifting into Clockwork. The time energy surged through him.

He paused.

"No… there's no Sotobro effect," Clockwork-Nathan murmured. "That means this isn't a paradox or time loop. It's not temporal. It's ontological. Something's unmaking Ben at a fundamental level."

The Doctor's face darkened. "Then the only way to confirm this… is to go to a point in time where you know Ben Tennyson existed. If he's still absent there, we'll know this is real. But first—we deal with the Time Vortex Fragment."

Nathan nodded grimly, reverting to his human form. His mind raced, trying to hold onto Ben's face, his voice, even the dumb catchphrases.

Then he remembered something.

Amy had once restored the Doctor from nothing—just by believing in him.

It had worked then.

Maybe it could work now.

He shut his eyes… and concentrated.

Ben Tennyson exists. I know he does. He's stubborn. He's reckless. He's a hero. He always was. No force in the universe can erase that.

And with that, Nathan began to believe—truly believe—in Ben's existence.

Because sometimes, belief was the last line of defense against being forgotten.

Jumpgate Side

The ship shot out of the jumpgate like a bullet from a railgun, stars warping into a static, sickly yellow sky as their new location resolved around them—towering spires of Highbreed architecture, blackened metal ridges, and glowing turrets nested atop every visible structure.

"Uh, we've got company," Kevin muttered, hands already flying across the console. The ship jerked hard to the left as crimson plasma blasts lit up the void.

Lessers—dozens of them—manned turret-like rigs built into spires, firing in carefully synchronized patterns. Their beams weren't wild. They were precise. Trained. And they were trying to shoot them down before they could even orient.

"Guess they don't roll out the welcome mat for strangers," Tony snapped, sliding into the weapons chair. The console flared to life under his fingers, holographic crosshairs lining up with a tower. "Firing back."

The ship rocked again. A plasma bolt nearly sheared off the starboard wing if not for the translucent pink hexagonal barrier Gwen had projected around them.

"Shield's holding… barely," Gwen said through gritted teeth, both hands extended, glowing magenta as the field rippled with each impact. Sweat already dotted her brow.

"Chromastone!" Ben shouted, smacking the Omnitrix down. A flash of lavender light, a crystalline form in his place a moment later.

He leapt toward the ship's side viewport, opened a section of hull manually, and held himself just outside. His body lit up as incoming energy blasts hit him directly—and were absorbed harmlessly into the pulsing lines of his crystal skin.

He shouted over the wind, "I'm soaking up as much as I can, but they're not letting up!"

"Then maybe tell them to take a break!" Kevin shouted back, wrestling with the controls. Another hit rocked the hull. The main engine sputtered.

Tony fired another volley—this one struck true, taking out an entire tower in a burst of flaming debris—but three more lit up in its place.

"Alright, Plan B," he muttered. "Which is mostly crash and scream."

Azmuth, who had been sitting calmly in a reinforced chair behind them all, barely blinked as the ship rattled from another hit. He reached up, brushing imaginary dust off his lapel.

"You know," Azmuth said, voice smooth and unbothered, "for a supposedly 'advanced' race, they seem unusually invested in wasting ammunition."

"Not the time, Frodo," Kevin growled, yanking hard on the controls. The ship dove. "Losing altitude!"

"Correction: you're losing altitude. I'm quite comfortable," Azmuth replied without a hint of tension.

Ben re-entered the ship with a flip and sealed the hatch. "Energy's maxed out. I can blast our way through, if—"

"Too late," Gwen cut in. "One of those towers just locked us!"

A massive concussive beam slammed into their side.

Warning sirens blared.

Everything lurched.

The shield cracked.

The nose dipped sharply—

—and the ship fell.

They plummeted past the towers, deeper into the canyon-like structure of the Highbreed city. Kevin fought the controls with pure instinct. Metal screeched. The ship spun. Gwen stabilized the interior with a gravity field. Tony tried to soften the descent with thruster bursts, but they were going down too fast.

Ben braced Chromastone's body over Gwen and Azmuth as they slammed into the black stone ground with a deafening crunch.

Sparks flew. The lights died.

Silence.

Then a metallic groan.

And booted footsteps.

Through the shattered viewport, shadows approached—Lessers, tall and armored, rifles trained on the wreckage. One of them barked an order in a language none of them understood, but the message was clear:

Surrender.

Ben tried to rise, but Gwen caught his arm. "Too many," she whispered, eyes narrowing.

Tony's eyes flicked toward his gauntlet, only for Azmuth to gently nudge it down with one tiny hand.

"No heroics," the Galvan said calmly. "Not yet."

Kevin spat blood, already lifting his hands. "So… we're doing the 'get captured' part now?"

Azmuth just sighed. "It's tradition."

Two seconds later, the door was blasted open, and the Lessers stormed in—shouting, rifles up, surrounded by the glow of a containment field already forming around them.

The cell was quiet. Too quiet. No guards. No surveillance. Just metallic walls, a low humming containment field, and the faint scent of ozone from fried circuitry.

Kevin tugged against his cuffs and scowled. "They really just dumped us here and bounced?"

Tony surveyed the room, already zeroing in on the half-scorched Lesser gauntlet flickering near the corner. "No guards, no cameras, and a half-dead weapon lying around. Either we're the bait, or someone skipped training day."

He knelt beside the scrap and popped open his forearm plate. Sparks hissed as he worked. "Remind me to send them a thank-you card."

A moment later, each set of cuffs clicked and fell to the ground. Gwen was the first to shake her hands out and start charging a mana sphere.

"Alright. So far, infiltration's going great," she said. "Let's not wait around for them to remember we exist."

Ben didn't move. He stood near the far wall, eyes locked on the Omnitrix's dial as it spun. "Omnitrix," he said quietly, "give me your best option for infiltration."

"Optimal species found.

He slammed down the core.

There was a pulse of green light—and then he was gone.

Kevin blinked and looked around. "...Wait. Weren't there five of us?"

Tony frowned. "Huh." He glanced toward the corner, then shook his head. "Never mind. Must be jump lag."

"Memory disorientation," Azmuth said, without even looking up from his scanner. "Very common. Keep moving."

The cell door was wide open. They stepped through it cautiously, but no one stopped them. No alarms. No turrets. No resistance.

Meanwhile, something tall and silent moved behind them.

Ben's new form—gaunt, alien, faceless—glided like a shadow. Black suit. Pale skin. A presence you forgot the moment you looked away.

Two Highbreed guards turned a corner and froze. One tried to lift a weapon, but Ben raised a hand, lightning crackling faintly across his fingertips.

"You need to check the eastern hall," he said, voice calm and hollow. "You're needed there now."

Both guards nodded, turned... and forgot.

Ben walked past them, already reaching for the next door. His other hand surged with static, a precise arc of electricity frying the lock in a clean sizzle. The door hissed open.

Elsewhere, the team kept moving through unguarded corridors. Gwen glanced behind her, wariness rising. "Okay, this is weird. Not a single patrol?"

Kevin shrugged. "Maybe they're still reorganizing after the crash."

"Or we're being let in," Tony muttered, tapping the side of his helmet. "But I'm not seeing any signals."

Azmuth was unusually quiet, gaze flicking behind them. Then he nodded slightly, as if in silent acknowledgment.

Farther ahead, a pair of Highbreed engineers stood at a junction terminal. One reached for the alert beacon. Ben appeared behind him, invisible in thought even as his lightning-laced fingers brushed the panel. The alert system sparked and died. The engineer collapsed moments later.

The other looked straight at Ben.

"Tell your commander the prisoners escaped through maintenance bay six."

A few seconds later, the alien was running full speed down the opposite corridor, no memory of the voice that told him to.

One by one, checkpoints failed. Doors opened. Guards moved out of the way or simply forgot why they were standing there. Ben didn't rush. He moved like he belonged.

Eventually, the rest of the team reached the tower's central spire. Kevin paused, hand on a wall panel. "This just keeps getting easier."

"Too easy," Gwen said, watching the halls. "I haven't cast a single spell."

Azmuth stepped forward. "Some patterns don't come from luck. They come from guidance."

Behind them, a ripple of green light lit the hallway.

Ben stepped out of it, human again.

Everyone froze.

Gwen's brow furrowed. "Wait—Ben?"

Kevin stared. "Hold on—weren't you—? Weren't you just—?"

Tony tilted his head. "How did I not notice you were gone?"

Azmuth allowed himself a thin smile. "Welcome back."

Ben smirked. "Miss me?"

Kevin muttered, "Okay, I'm done trying to keep up with your alien roulette."

Gwen just shook her head. "Next time, maybe warn us when you're going to vanish from our brains."

Ben brushed some dust off his sleeve. "Where's the fun in that?"

Behind them, the final door loomed.

Still sealed.

For now.